The National Weather Service has issued Flood Warnings for the Cache La Poudre River through Greeley, to where it meets the South Platte River, and all the way out to where the South Platte crosses the state line, and goes into Nebraska. The South Platte joins the North Platte in North Platte, Nebraska, and continues along as the Platte River through Nebraska, and joins the Missouri River South of Omaha, and then on to meet the Mighty Mississippi in St. Louis. The Cache La Poudre and the South Platte, along with the Arkansas River, form the entire Drainage Basin for all of Eastern Colorado. Snow melt (we're above normal on the leeward side snow pack), and Spring rains (Whoo boy!) from huge areas of land all collect and drain from here using these rivers, propelled by gravity, and continue on down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Quite a big area to drain. With the saturated, and nearly so, soil in this area, it ain't gonna soak in. I think I mentioned something last week about the "empty" drainage ditches and canals SLW noticed when we first moved here. Well...they're pretty full about now, maybe a foot or two from the top of their banks. Miles downstream of us it going to be much worse. The alert mentioned various places downstream along the course of the South Platte, and in all the places mentioned, they were a few feet short of the official "Flood Stage", but the river was expected to go above that in the next few days.
Per the NWS, this event is in the upper 10% of the maximum of what's been observed before, so it looks like there's a Big One Comin' downstream of us.
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Horsetooth, Horseshoe, Boyd, and Loveland lakes are as full as I've ever seen them. And the melt has yet to begin.
ReplyDeleteI haven't driven the road along Horsetooth since last fall. I know some of the farm ponds up by Laporte are much fuller than I'm used to seeing.
DeleteWhen does The Big Melt usually occur?
If this is El Nino, great. If all this rain continues until the Fall monsoons start, we will be in real trouble. The last time that happened the Republican River, hardly more than a creek most of the time, nearly wiped out Benkleman, NE and large portions of Grand Island, NE were cutoff. Even I-80 was affected. US 85 through Greeley was closed when the Platte overflowed the bridge at Evans and parts of Evans were hit. Sisty worked overtime for weeks with all the claims.
ReplyDeleteToo many people in Colorado don't buy flood insurance.
I vaguely remember hearing something about the Republican and Platte Rivers flooding. I heard "North Greeley" up by 71st Ave was expected to flood.
DeleteThis does have the potential to get ugly, because the plains have had plenty of rain too!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I went down a rabbit hole last night reading about all the watersheds out this way, and where they went.
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